A Sunny September Morning

My version of the story begins just like everyone else’s. It was a typical Tuesday morning in September.

Believe it or not, I used to be corporate mucky muck in state government. I worked for the Massachusetts Department of Education at the time, and I was looking forward to a quiet day in the office where I could dress a little more casually and tackle the piles on my desk instead of rushing all over the Commonwealth from meeting to meeting in my suit and heels.

It was 8:30 AM when I arrived in the office and turned my computer on, but only 7:30 AM in Illinois, so I had gotten there early enough to log on and have a cup of cyber coffee with my friend Donna before she rushed off to her job at a huge law firm in Chicago’s Sears Tower. We were saying good morning and chatting about nothing in particular when she suddenly asked if I had the news on. “No, dear,” I said. “I’m already at the office. Why?”

“It looks like a plane just hit a building in NYC. Yikes. Ah well, I’m off to work. Talk to you later.”

Little did I know how soon I would talk to her again.

Some of the first news flashes about The World Trade Center flashed across my screen, and soon I had that lump in my stomach that everyone knows about now. I leaned back in my chair, stuck my head out of my office door, and yelled down the hall to my secretary. Her name was Donna, too. “Hey Donna, does the TV in the conference room get any reception, or is it just a monitor for the VHS?”

“I think it works, why?”

“I think there’s something big goin’ on in New York. Can we turn it on?”

“Lemmee check.’

In the meantime, I noticed my friend Laura’s screen name on my buddy list and immediately asked her what she knew. Laura was a “starving actress” in New York, only not so starving because she worked a day job for a financial firm in the World Trade Center. She told me that a plane had hit, but that they didn’t know anything more about it. She was thinking they’d probably have to evacuate eventually, but wasn’t really sure.

“You’ve got to come see this.” Secretary Donna’s face said it all.

By the time I got into the conference room, the second plane had hit, and there was finally talk of terrorism. The President was in the air and the Vice President had been whisked away by the Secret Service to the notorious “undisclosed location.” Soon the Pentagon was hit as well, and there were horrible rumors of an additional attack on the Sears Tower, which was being evacuated immediately.

Throughout the morning’s news reports, I was still bouncing back and forth to my desk and getting the story from inside the World Trade Center from a very calm and collected Laura, who hadn’t even left the building yet. Then Tower One collapsed. Laura’s screen name was still on my list, but she stopped responding.

At around 11 AM, the Commissioner of Education came over the PA system in the office and sent us all home. We were to leave the building immediately. No exceptions. I made one last attempt to IM Laura before Secretary Donna’s panicked voice brought the point home. “Seana, NOW!”

I made it home without incident, and like most people, I was glued to the TV and computer for the remainder of the day. Thankfully, there had been no attack on the Sears Tower. Friend Donna made it home safely as well, but I could tell that she was near tears. My mom called in short order and all but forbade me to leave the house. But the most disturbing messages that I had were emails from my friend Lynne who works on Lincoln Center uptown. She was unable to leave her office, unable to get home to Queens, and they had no telephones. There’s no telling what we would have done if they had lost the internet as well, because Laura had still not been heard from. Neither had our friend Maureen’s sister who worked downtown as well. At least Lynne was able to have me call her parents and let them know that she was OK.

By dinner time, Laura was home, but extremely dirty and very, very rattled. She had been through hell; covered in dust and narrowly missing falling debris as she and her coworkers fled on foot. Maureen and her family did not make contact with her sister until later in the evening.

Here in Massachusetts, we were all able to return to work as normal on September 12, but things were not the same. For one thing, my direct supervisor had flown to Atlanta for a quick meeting with the CDC and was stranded. There was no way to tell how soon he’d be able to get home. Another co-worker had lost a good friend. But the worst part for me was the anger that engulfed the country. Everyone was on everyone’s nerves. Try as I might, I just couldn’t drum up the patriotism or violent need for vengeance that everyone seemed to have. I got sick of looking at red, white, and blue, very quickly. The Sears Tower suddenly became reminiscent of Fork Knox. Friend Donna was late for work every day for two weeks straight, and she kept expecting fist fights to break out in the lobby. So that weekend, I went directly home. I needed a break from the negativity.

On my way out of town, I heard sirens and pulled over to let them pass. They were getting louder and louder, but I couldn’t see them yet. Imagine my surprise when police cruisers came flying at me from both directions. The officers coming toward me were chasing an out of-control vehicle that was going much too fast on the wrong side of the road. The officers behind me had clearly been dispatched to help intercept it. Unfortunately, the crazy driver decided to drive up onto the wide sidewalk right next to me and the car skidded to a stop, denting its fender on a building. In order to surround the suspect, the police cruisers had to surround me too. They crouched low around my convertible with their guns drawn and ordered the loser out of the car, which had apparently been stolen. They hardly had trouble apprehending him though, because he tumbled out onto the sidewalk giggling as soon as the car door was open, obviously intoxicated. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Would it have been as much of scene a few days earlier? Probably not. I would bet that crime and violence were at an all time high during those few days.

When I got home to Albany, we cooked a big dinner and talked things out as a family. During our discussion, my Mom confessed to a very profound crisis of conscience. I had heard her say many times that she would use force to defend herself and her country if her property or loved ones were directly threatened. But then on 9/11, they WERE, and those idealistic convictions invaded her dreams in the nights that followed. In the recurring dream that she had been having, she was actually faced with the opportunity to defend herself with force. As a result, she was haunted in her waking hours by the question: Could she actually do it? After a couple of restless nights, she finally determined that she could NOT.

The following January, Laura turned 31, and we all gladly dropped everything to celebrate with her in Manhattan, including Maureen, who is now her roommate. We went to a fancy dinner at a restaurant where we could watch celebrities, and then we clubbed until 3 AM. I think it was the first time that either of them was able to tell us the whole story of what they had been through. Until then Maureen had been pretty quiet about it while Laura had only complained about working out of a hotel suite and later dodging dorky tourists who had come to visit “Ground Zero.”

Later that year, Laura was cast in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, which was problematic since she had to take a leave of absence from her day job. The Enron scandal had just broken, and the financial firm that she worked for was picking up the slack. There just didn’t seem to be a major national news story that year that didn’t directly involve Laura.

Things calmed down eventually, but I don’t believe that anyone has forgotten where they were or who they spoke to that day. Some of the effects of the attacks are more obvious than others, but no one denies them.

September 11 has rolled around to Tuesday again. It’s hard to believe it was so long ago, but even harder to remember when 9/11 was just another date on the calendar.

“September mornings still can make me feel that way.”